Mass Media Funk

a
commentary on mass media stories about the scientific, the
paranormal, the supernatural, and anything else that yanks at my
eyebrows.

Science, Religion, and
Politics

"Alone among the great
nations of history we have got rid of religion as a serious scourge—and by
the simple process of reducing it to a petty nuisance." --H. L.
Mencken in Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos, Simon &
Schuster, 1931)

December 21, 2006. Today is the shortest day of
the year in the northern hemisphere, which may mean that the sparks flying
in the increasingly hot war of words between defenders of science and
defenders of religion will be more visible. Perhaps no story in 2006 had as
much success in helping us forget about the Iraq debacle as the one that
featured scientists bashing religion and loudly complaining about political
interference in science. Looking back, who would have predicted it? I mean,
the year began with the news that Muslims worldwide were outraged at Danish
cartoons (published the previous September) that lampooned their prophet
Muhammad. In February a different kind of story started to emerge. At the
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) a
press release was issued that denounced legislation and policies that
would undermine the teaching of evolution and "deprive students of the
education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an
increasingly technological, global community." The denouncement came on the
heels of the
Kitzmiller decision the previous December in which Judge John E. Jones
III exposed "intelligent design" (ID) as non-scientific and the intellectual
equivalent of sticking out your tongue at someone you dislike. ID is a tool
of Christian apologetics used to defend the faith, as its devotees
understand it. For all the cobwebs they spin and the dust they raise, the
IDers are intellectual pranksters, the religious equivalent of the
dirty tricks gang of
the Nixon era.

In March, the Bush administration, already under attack
by Chris Mooney in his
The Republican War on Science, took a hit from The New Yorker's
Michael
Specter in a piece called "Political Science - The Bush Administration's
war on the laboratory." Complaints from scientists about the Bush people
stifling results they don't like continued throughout the year. Earlier this
month the Union for Concerned Scientists published a statement signed
by more than 10,000 scientists denouncing the Bush administration for
"distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."* At about
the same time, scientists were complaining about a new policy of the U.S.
Geological Survey that requires administration pre-screening of all
scientists' published research and talks. The Bush administration seems
particularly concerned about science that might conflict with their views on
global warming, sexual activity, and reproduction.

March also saw the publication of Dr. Herbert Benson's
study on prayer, paid for by the Templeton Foundation, for 1,800 heart
bypass surgery patients at six medical centers. The only thing of interest
found by the study was that patients who knew they were being prayed for had
a slightly higher rate of complications than both those who weren't prayed
for and those who were but didn't know it.

That prayer doesn't heal at a distance wasn't much of
a surprise but that three books attacking belief in God and religion would
be bestsellers was shocking. Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell:
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,
Richard Dawkins's
The God Delusion, and Sam Harris's Letters to a Christian Nation
caused an uproar in the blogosphere and in many mainstream publications.
Time magazine sponsored a debate between Dawkins and Francis Collins (a
theist and a scientist) in an issue it called "God
vs. Science." And The Science Network in association with the
Crick-Jacobs Center brought together an
eminent group of scientists
and philosophers to explore the following kinds of questions:

Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will
it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can
evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better
understand how we construct beliefs, and experience empathy, fear and awe?
Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful
as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion
as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then
what?

That meeting took place at the Salk Institute in La
Jolla, California, from November 5-7 and was described in the New York
Times as
a free-for-all. The raucous debate continues on
Edge.org. Dennett would like to see world religions taught in public
schools. Some scientists (Dawkins, for example) would like to see the end of
religion and others think it would be cruel to take away something that
provides so much comfort to so many people.

Due to poor planning on my part, I taught a course in
world religions this past semester at Sacramento City College. I did have
one young woman announce to the class near the end of the term that she had
called her sister in Colorado—a devout atheist—and told her that after
studying all these religions she had come over to the dark side. She
realized, she said, that none of them were any better than the other and
that none of them really made much sense. I can't report that there was a
chorus of amens that went up after her announced deconversion. One fellow,
in fact, seemed to find something wonderful in every religion we studied. He
was especially taken in by Sikhism. But most of my students seemed to
approach the various religions we discussed with cautious indifference. They
were surprised to discover that Islam is no more represented by jihadist
terrorists than Christianity is by abortion clinic assassins.

One fact that any student raised in Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam must find strange is that not all religions believe
in a God or gods. Neither Buddhism nor Jainism believe in a Supreme Being
whose will brought about the universe. But the most interesting thing about
Jainism is the set of beliefs that we shouldn't get attached to anything and
we shouldn't harm any living creature (ahimsa), including insects and
growing plants. Jains believe that all life forms are equally precious. We
should think, speak, and act in ways that cause as little harm as possible
to other creatures, including other persons. Jains also teach extreme
tolerance because they think truth has many aspects. Like Hindus and
Buddhists, Jains believe in karma and reincarnation. We don't know much
about the origins of religion in India, but the many practices we now call
Hinduism and the practice known as Jainism are indigenous Indian religions.
Jains have a naturalistic worldview. They believe the universe is without a
beginning and has no creator or destroyer but is in an eternal cycle of
progress and decline. In fact, one of the common features of all religions
seems to be the belief that we are now in a state of decline and that is why
the Teacher, Guru, Prophet, Buddha, or Savior appeared when he did. (Most of
these founders of religions or churches are men; two exceptions are the
charlatans Madame Blavatsky and
Mary Baker Eddy.) Given the facts of human history, it is likely that
there will always be new prophets and saviors and hence, new religions.

Some religions, like Baha’i and Tibetan Buddhism, seem
compatible with science without requiring metaphysical gyrations and fatuous
harmonies or glorious magisteria. But most religions seem hopelessly at odds
with the facts and hopelessly in love with fantasies and inane prohibitions
or rituals. Studying religions over a few months time enables one to see the
enormity of the irrationality of so many stories of nihilism and asceticism,
good and evil spirits, miracles, healers, revelations, and promised Last
Judgments or release from suffering. Born into a religion and being fed
irrationality gradually, in small doses, leads billions of normal people to
take for granted baskets full of absurd notions. They can attest to the
Trinity and transubstantiation as
easily as to the rising of the sun. But cram the inanities of other
religions into a few weeks of lessons and even a child will see that one's
own religion isn't any different.

Also, the story of how Christianity has come to be the
religion of about one-third of humanity is fascinating. Equally interesting
are the insights about self-control gained from thousands of years of
looking inward by the meditative traditions. And the Buddha's insight into
the nature of the self, or rather no-self, wasn't grasped in the West for
another thousand years when David Hume figured it out. Muhammad's insights
into the value of modesty and brotherhood civilized a world long before the
Mongols, the Crusaders, and the religious fanatics destroyed it. The
communal kitchen of the Sikhs is a great idea, as is the idea of charity
that is prominent in many religions. Religions have had their moments they
can be proud of and that the rest of us can learn from.

As I look back on this year, I'm reminded of how much
we miss Carl Sagan. He was not dismissive of religion or condescending as
Dawkins is. His
discussions of religion are still worth reading. It may be true, as H.
L. Mencken wrote, that "religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to
mankind—that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical
side have been more than overborne by the damage it has done to clear and
honest thinking." The clergy, said Mencken, have a right to be heard, of
course, "but they have no more right to be attended to than the astrologers
and necromancers who were once their colleagues and rivals." Even so, the
way to end religion might be to encourage more of it, to set up study groups
to get to the truth about orisa, kami, nagas, Great Spirit, Changing Woman,
devas, avatars, rishis, maya, mantras, yantras, sakti, mudras, etc. Let us
study the world's religions with respect and an open mind. The result might
surprise us.